


Do You Love the Colors of the Sky?

by Babenclaw



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Sora-centric, color study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-07
Updated: 2015-12-07
Packaged: 2018-05-05 11:04:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5372969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Babenclaw/pseuds/Babenclaw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>White light becomes a rainbow when bent just right, and Sora loves every color.</p><p>A look at Sora's story through colors.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Do You Love the Colors of the Sky?

His first favorite color is blue. It is blue like the waves that crash on sun-bleached seashell shores, the kind that fades to white at the foamy caps and fades to the deepest navy close to the horizon. It is the ocean that raises him, just as much as his mother and the sun in the sky and the kind island people who always call his name back when he waves and shouts “good morning” on his way past.

It’s by that beautiful, churning blue that he meets his first and closest friend, a boy with hair the color of the snow he only sees in tacky tourist snow globes and eyes a shade so close and so far from the ocean he loves so much.

It becomes his first trio, just him and that boy and the ocean between them, and they race along beside its face, coming back with red-soled feet from the too-hot sand they play on. Their feet will toughen up in time, just like the other islanders. Sora’s face will brown in the sun, blond kissing his cinnamon hair, but Riku will only redden until he learns how to apply sunscreen properly. After that, he will remain porcelain pale, with freckles across his shoulders and silver down his back.

His second favorite color is red. It is the color of his blood on the sand the first time his best friend hits him with his wooden sword too hard. The plank smacks him across the nose and he doesn’t bat an eyelash until the other lets out a shout.

“Sora, you’re bleeding!”

Sora laughs, thinks he’s joking, but when he twirls his sword in his hand and opens his mouth to laugh, he tastes too-warm iron and realizes it’s not a joke. He drops his sword and holds his hand up to his nose, too late to stem the flood of red as it creeps across his once-white shirt. It drips down his arm and makes patterns on the dry sand below him. He knows he should be panicking, but it does not hurt that bad, or maybe it hurts so much he cannot feel it. He watches the red make patterns on the seashell sand until Riku returns with a bottle of clean water from the waterfall nearby.

That red is dark and deep and so, so different from the blue of the ocean and Sora decides that day that he wants to change as well, wants this to be the next step in his growing up and becoming a man. And so he begs his mom for new red clothes and she ends up getting him a few things. He wears them with pride, standing out against the stark blue of the sea and the sky.

His third favorite color is purple. It is the color of her eyes, of the girl who fell from the sky and into his life like a meteor, her personality streaking across his sky and lighting it up in a whole different way than his best friend. Soon, things he only did with Riku change to be Riku and Kairi, and sometimes things are only Sora and Kairi, and he doesn’t know why his heart races when it is Sora-and-Kairi in a way so different from when it is Sora-and-Riku but he kind of likes it.

He brings her seashells from the beach and she always takes them, always smiles, and Riku is upset that he’s not around as much, sure, but Sora likes both of his friends and tries to spend time with them both. And if he spends a bit more time with Kairi then with Riku, well, Riku had him for years without any Kairi at all so he shouldn’t be upset anyway.

His favorite color is purple for a long time, for years. They are a trio now, Riku-and-Sora-and-Kairi, and Sora is sure he will have the two of them for the rest of his life. They build a raft—well, Riku builds a raft, but Sora helps a little bit—and promise to go see other worlds together.

Sora has never liked the color black, not really. He prefers bright colors, the colors of life around him. And when the darkness comes and swallows his best friend whole, Sora hates that color even more because it dared to take half of his happiness away. And when the darkness takes the rest, takes Kairi and his whole island, Sora decides in a burst of anger that black is probably his least favorite color.

The thought of the purple carries him across world after world, searching for its exact shade across their surfaces. He looks for Riku too, of course, worries for his friend, but Sora knows he is alive and safe while Kairi is still lost to the black, to the unknown.

That shade of purple is the last thing he remembers before the black takes him into its maw, and the first thing he sees upon his escape.

Sora didn’t need Riku asking for him to take care of her in order to do it.

His memories grow dim, almost blank entirely after that. He remembers walking with Donald and Goofy, remembers Pluto with a letter in his mouth. From there, nothing. Just an empty void, a hole that isn’t a hole at all but Sora thinks there should be a hole because his memories don’t line up quite right, two puzzle pieces jammed together and forced to fit. From that not-a-hole, he gets vague emotions. Worry, anger, and a nostalgia-love for the color white.

When he wakes up, he is surrounded by the color, by bright and shining white, and Sora thinks it comforting rather than sterile. White-and-purple-and-white flash in his mind and for the first time in his life, Sora has two favorites.

Somewhere quiet and dark within him thinks fondly of the color red, a different red from the red of his island, the red of sunsets and blood-on-stone and a vibrant crimson that is softer than it should be. Sora does not know why, but he accepts it just as he accepts the white. Even deeper down, there is a not-memory of a black highlighted in purple, a different black from the darkness that took his best friend away.

When the faeries give him his new clothing, in that room surrounded by covered mirrors, Sora is not upset by the black in the way he expects. It feels like a sacrifice, an offering to the darkness that took his best friend. The darkness in one heart for the light in another. It reminds him of silver and turquoise and white doors closing with a dull finality. He wears it in atonement for that choice.

He will think of that turquoise as he begins his second journey, asking everywhere and anywhere if people have seen his best friend (and the King) even when he’s mostly sure they won’t have. He asks in penance and he hopes someone, anyone can hear in his voice just how badly he needs someone to help him, please help him. He’s not sure when that turquoise and silver becomes on par with purple-white-purple except one day he learns that Kairi is in danger too and he still asks for Riku first.

He is relieved to find Kairi safe, glad to hold her close and feel her gentle breath against his neck ruffling the short hairs there, but the presence of cold, hard amber dulls his relief. He hates that color, hates what it has done to the people he cares about. It’s not until Kairi presses their hands together that he realizes, he knows that this is his RIku, and he can’t keep steady. His knees hit the ground and he grips to him like a lifeline, a year apart changing them both. He looks into amber and imagines turquoise and thinks he can live with that.

It is not until the moment, under a strange heart-shaped moon turned pink from interference, when that explosion sends him to the ground, that Sora realizes he was lying to himself. When he stands again, carefully, he turns and braces himself for amber but instead meets black cloth and familiar silver and porcelain and he realizes with a strange pang that his Riku is truly himself again. And when the black cloth is pulled away and he is pinned by turquoise again, Sora realizes that the turquoise he remembered was nothing compared to the real thing. He had remembered the color, but not the intensity behind it, the light that shined there. He didn’t realize how much he missed it until he had it back.

When it is all over, and they sit on that dismal beach together, Sora leans against Riku and breathes in the scent of sweat and darkness and his best friend. His body relaxes slowly, his muscles unfamiliar with the idea of calm and peace. Riku, next to him, is equally tense. They are not the same boys who left their island a year and a half ago. They are not the same people. Riku is not the same turquoise and Sora is not the same lapis but time and trials have smoothed their rough edges, polishing their best features to a shine. Sora thinks about himself and he thinks about Riku and he thinks about Kairi and more than anything he thinks about how grateful he is that the three of them have made it to see the other side.

And when that door to the light opens, Sora will stand and help Riku to his feet, and he will see the light behind that turquoise when he whispers “we’ll go together.”


End file.
